


that which sparks joy

by ailurea



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, KonMari | Marie Kondo's Tidying Method, Light Angst, M/M, S8 what S8?, background Allura/Lance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-27 21:29:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17774528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ailurea/pseuds/ailurea
Summary: An extended stay on Earth means Keith and Shiro have time to do a lot of things they couldn't before. They can buy a condo together, Keith can take hot showers with real water—Shiro can read Marie Kondo and go on a cleaning spree.It's one thing to hear about the life-changing magic of tidying up. Experiencing it? Is something else entirely.





	that which sparks joy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [damnspacebois (Race_Jackson23)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Race_Jackson23/gifts).



> Happy Sheithlentines to Mads, who requested some domestic Sheith! :)
> 
> All quotes are from _The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up_ by Marie Kondo.

**(I)**

_To truly cherish the things that are important to you, you must first discard those that have outlived their purpose._

 

Keith comes home to find that the living room has transformed into a sea of fabric, clothing strewn everywhere on the ground and in stacks on the coffee table. The only high ground is the couch, where Shiro sits holding a pair of ties in his hands.

He puts the ties down and smiles when he notices Keith come through the door. “Keith, I thought you weren’t going to be back until tomorrow!” He stands, then pauses, staring at the fabric by his feet.

Keith takes a step back. “Get ready,” he says. He waits just long enough for Shiro to look up before he takes a running leap across the room and crashes against Shiro’s chest, latching onto him with all of his limbs.

“Keith!” Shiro catches him, but he’s not prepared—Keith’s weight sends him staggering unsteadily until he’s sitting on the couch again, with Keith in his lap. He lets out a sharp exhale, part laughter and part exasperation. “A little more warning next time?”

Keith settles himself more comfortably and runs his fingers through the short crop of Shiro’s hair on either side of his head. He rakes his nails against Shiro’s scalp, and smiles as Shiro’s eyelashes flutter in response. “I trust you to catch me.”

Shiro skims one hand from Keith’s waist up to the back of his neck to give him a properly bruising welcome home kiss. Keith tangles his fingers into the longer strands of Shiro’s hair and tugs him back against the couch to deepen it.

They break apart with a sigh.

Shiro reaches up, brushes Keith’s bangs back from his face with a hand. “I missed you. Wish you would’ve told me you were coming home early. I wouldn’t have made such a mess.”

“Wanted to surprise you.” Keith glances around them at all the clothing. “What are you doing, anyways?”

“Just some cleaning.” Shiro’s hands are back on Keith’s waist, and he runs his thumbs over the hem of Keith’s flight suit.

Keith doesn’t let it distract him. Neither of them are messy people, and their usual method of cleaning doesn’t involve taking everything out of the closet first. “This is some pretty hardcore cleaning.”

“Yeah, it’s, uh—it’s this old philosophy called KonMari,” Shiro says. “Named for the woman who started it, Marie Kondo. I heard about it back when we were still at the Garrison, and then I found the book with all my textbooks a couple days ago. I’m not sure where it came from, I think it might’ve been, ah, Adam’s.”

Keith lifts his eyebrows at that, but doesn’t comment.

“Anyways,” Shiro says. “I decided to try it. It’s kind of a… radical cleaning up, I guess? You go through all your things to see if they spark joy, and if they don’t, you throw them away. The idea is that you’re left with only things that make you happy.”

Keith’s familiar. He wonders why Shiro felt the urge to try. Keith doesn’t own very much—never has—and he didn’t think Shiro did either, aside from his absurd book collection.

That’s what being in space for so long will do to you. He didn’t go up there with anything but the clothes on his back, his knife, and a bit of (mostly useless) money and two photographs tucked into his wallet. And Shiro—well, he was stuck up there with much less than that.

But now that they’ve made their home on Earth for a while, Keith supposes there’s been time for their possessions to grow.

They’ve taken an extended stay on Earth, after the war. At first it was just a break to give them time to take care of things at the Garrison and put all their affairs back in order, but the next thing he knew Shiro was an admiral. Outside of wartime, the admiralty included an office and responsibilities at the Garrison, and their return to space was indefinitely suspended.

Keith looks down at the couch cushions, and the pair of ties that Shiro was studying when he came in.

Shiro notices him looking and holds them up. One is navy blue and dotted with stars; he’s had it for as long as Keith’s known him, and he’s never seen him wear it. The other is sleek black, with a single silver stripe. Keith’s never seen it in his life.

“What do you think?” Shiro says. “Do these spark joy?”

“When’s the last time you wore either of those?”

Shiro hums and strokes the silk. He tilts his lip into a suggestive smile. “I don’t have to wear them for them to spark joy.”

Keith appreciates the thought, but— “Shiro. We have literally bought silk restraints just for that. We don’t need to ruin your unloved ties.”

“You have a point,” Shiro says. He looks at the blue tie. “Thank you for supporting me during my one and only high school prom. I was a disaster, but at least I was an attractive one.” Then he turns to the black one. “Thank you for helping me get through my interview for the Garrison. Iverson liked you a lot.”

Shiro puts a hand on Keith’s back to support him as he bends forward slightly to deposit the ties in the box by his feet. “It’s part of the philosophy, to thank everything you’re discarding for what they’ve done for you.”

Keith considers that. Then he leans back, using Shiro’s hand as support—Shiro squawks and puts up his other hand to hold Keith more firmly—and scoops up a familiar black T-shirt from the ground. He sits up with it and holds it out to Shiro. It’s from the time Shiro introduced Keith to pho at a restaurant called Pho King; he ate the equivalent of three bowls of pho in thirty minutes in exchange for a free meal, his picture on the wall, and this T-shirt proclaiming him the _Pho King King_. “What has this done for you?”

Shiro takes the shirt and smiles fondly at it. “Made you fall in love with me, of course.”

Keith snorts so hard his nose throbs with the force. “Yeah, sure. That’s what it was. I thought you were gonna throw up the rest of the day.”

“But you hung out with me anyways.” Shiro’s smile is bright and huge.

“Like I’d let you choke and die on your own vomit,” Keith says, but he and Shiro both know that there was no where else Keith would have rather been.

“Well, it definitely doesn’t fit anymore,” Shiro says, holding it up to himself. “I kind of want to keep it anyways.”

It’ll probably fit, for some definition of the word. Shiro’s muscles will bulge obscenely, not that Keith considers that a problem. But— “Would you ever wear it?”

Shiro laughs. “I don’t think so.”

“Then there’s not really a point in keeping it in the closet to forget about it again.” He pats Shiro’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, you’ll always be the Pho King King to me.”

Shiro pecks the tip of his nose. “Thank you.” He looks down at the shirt. “And thank you for proving to Keith that I’m strong and capable,” he tells it seriously, as though there aren’t enough examples of that to fill the IGF-ATLAS and then some without including the one time he chugged his bodyweight in pho.

Keith loves this ridiculous man.

“How was your trip to New Daibazaal?” Shiro says as he starts to fold the shirt between them. “It’s been a while since you’ve been out there, right?”

Keith sobers a bit.

Before this, it’d been almost eight months since his last trip out, and that was much too long. As much as he wants to just stay with Shiro, he finds that he can’t. After so much time in space, Earth’s gravity has begun to feel heavy, like quicksand slowly sinking beneath his feet. If he waits too long before pulling himself free, he may never be able to escape again.

But he’s not going to bring down the mood by talking about any of this, especially not when he’s just gotten back.

“It was a good trip,” Keith says. “Reorganization hasn’t been easy for them out there. It’s still not. But they’re making progress. My mom says hi.”

“I say hi back.” Shiro supports Keith again as he puts the shirt in the box. “No hi from Kolivan?”

“Kolivan doesn’t say hi,” Keith says. “In general.”

Shiro laughs. “Fair.”

“He does want to know when you’ll come visit, though.”

Shiro hesitates at that, traces of laughter dimming. “I don’t know, there’s still a lot to wrap up here. But someday soon, I hope. It’s… it’s been a while since I’ve been up there.”

As much as Keith wishes Shiro would be up there with him, he's not going to rush him. “It’s okay.” He lowers his hands and links their fingers together. “The stars will always be waiting.”

There’s something sad in Shiro’s smile, like he knows what’s running through Keith’s mind. And he probably does. “Yeah.”

Keith squeezes his hands, and makes a show of surveying the chaotic state of the living room. “Think you’ll be done soon?”

“With cleaning?” Shiro says, blinking away the melancholy in his eyes. “Um, there’s a specific order. Clothes, books, papers, _komono_ , and—mementos.” His eyes flick over to the hall closet as he says the last word. “I don’t think we have too much, but it still might take a month or two.”

“Cool,” Keith says. “But I meant with the clothes. We need to get groceries.”

Shiro flutters his eyelashes at him. “You haven’t even looked in the fridge yet.”

Keith wants to have words with whoever taught Shiro to play coy because his natural eyelash fluttering is so alluring and this is so… not. It’s a crime against Shiro.

“Shiro. Sweetheart. Pumpkin.” What else did Lance call Allura? “Peachy… plum blossom.”

Shiro’s eyebrows go up.

“When have you ever bought groceries by yourself in your entire life.”

“Hey, you’ve been gone for an entire month,” Shiro says, pulling their linked hands to his heart. “Desperation changes a man.”

“I can literally see the Holts’ Tupperware sitting on the table.”

“I was very desperate,” Shiro says. “Sam took pity.”

“Take pity on me.” Keith pulls out every trick in the book—he drapes Shiro’s hands around his own neck and tilts his head down and to the side to look at him from below his eyelashes and through the veil of his hair. “Your boyfriend’s been eating dehydrated Garrison meals and space goo for weeks. I need fruit.”

“Fruit monster.” Shiro leans up to kiss him. Sucker. “Just give me a few minutes to finish this box, then we can take it to the Goodwill on the way.”

“Optimizing trips. I respect that.” Keith slides off Shiro’s lap to give him space to work.

“Well, it probably won’t be our only trip,” Shiro says. He holds up a Voltron T-shirt they all got from the production company making that weird cartoon about them. Keith donated his the second it came in the mail. “This is teaching me that there’s a lot I should get rid of.”

Keith hums. He thinks Shiro’s kind of missing the point, but it’s not surprising.

The thing about KonMari is that it’s easy to get lost in the idea of getting rid of things, so much so that most people think that that’s the entire point—that it’s about looking around yourself and deciding what doesn’t matter anymore. That it’s about deciding what parts of yourself to throw away.

But it’s not—not really.

It’s about deciding what parts of yourself to keep.

 

 

**(II)**

_When we really delve into the reasons for why we can’t let something go, there are only two: an attachment to the past or a fear for the future._

 

The thing with space travel is that it always gives Keith the weirdest case of time lag.

Days and nights are mental constructs when hurtling through the starlit vacuum of space. He always tries to keep himself on pace with Earth time on the return trip, but with just himself it’s much easier to fall into the pattern of doing things when he feels like doing things and sleeping when he feels like sleeping.

There’s a reason the Garrison doesn’t send people out on solo missions. Being out there alone is teetering on the edge of sanity.

Now, back on Earth, time still seems fictional, especially in their bedroom with the blackout curtains drawn. Keith opens his eyes and sees only Shiro’s thigh in the dim light. His arm is slung around it, holding Shiro close like a teddy bear.

Keith pulls himself closer and presses his lips against the firm muscle.

Shiro is leaning against the headboard with his datapad, and he sets it down and puts his hand in Keith’s hair when he sees he’s awake. “Morning, baby.”

“Morning?” Keith murmurs against his skin. Sounds fake.

“Late afternoon,” Shiro says. “Closer to evening. It’s almost sunset.”

Keith groans. “God. Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Shiro strokes his hair, nails scraping at his scalp in a way that makes the base of Keith’s spine tingle with pleasure. “I like watching you sleep.”

“Creepy,” Keith says, but he turns his head up for a kiss.

Shiro obliges easily, leaning down to meet their lips together, and the next thing Keith knows, Shiro’s on top of him and pressing him into the mattress.

Keith pulls away. “Shiro, no. I just slept for, what, sixteen hours? I’m gross.”

“Shiro, yes,” Shiro says, because he thinks he’s funny. He lifts himself off Keith’s chest enough to look down at him with soft but serious eyes. “I would rather have gross Keith than no Keith. I’ve been with no Keith for long enough.”

His voice is heartbreakingly sincere, and Keith blames drowsiness for the fact that his eyes start welling with tears. “Ugh, come here,” he says, voice rough as he loops his arms around Shiro’s neck, drags him back down, and kisses him soundly. But he swats Shiro’s hand away when it starts creeping toward his crotch. “Seriously, let me shower first and then you can do whatever you want with me.”

Shiro’s fingers dance up his sides. “Is that a promise?”

Keith squirms and tries to knee Shiro in the dick because that always tickles and Shiro knows it. Shiro retaliates by hooking his feet under Keith’s calves and using his thighs to clamp Keith’s legs to the bed. Keith scowls at him. “Shouldn’t you be cleaning or something?”

Shiro hums, torturous fingers slowing as he thinks. “I started going through books, but then I took a break to come spend time with you.” He pecks the tip of Keith’s nose. “Somehow I have a lot of books.”

Keith could’ve told him that.

Keith doesn’t really own any books, not anymore, but Shiro has enough to fill an entire bookshelf—all his required readings from his time as a student at the Garrison, as well as a number of other books that he had bought for fun, even though the time he had to read them was limited.

“Well, why don’t you finish that,” Keith says, “while I go shower.” His stomach growls, loudly. “And eat.”

Shiro kisses his cheek. “Poor baby. You worked so hard, sleeping for sixteen hours. You must be so hungry.”

Keith rolls his eyes. “Maybe next time you can come with me and make sure I don’t screw up my sleep schedule.”

“Maybe next time,” Shiro says, as he always does. He kisses Keith again before rolling off him. “I’ll warm up the leftovers.”

Keith showers until his skin is raw and pink. There isn’t much he misses about Earth other than Shiro, but the scalding pressure of real water is definitely on the list. When he gets out, the bathroom is a sauna—as it should be.

He makes his way out of the bathroom. Food sits hot on one side of the kitchen table, and Shiro sits on the other, stacks of books all around him.

“Thanks, Shiro,” Keith says as he sits. “It smells good.”

“I may not be able to cook, but I’m a beast with a microwave.” Shiro smiles at him. “How was your shower?”

Keith shrugs with one shoulder. “Could be hotter.”

“I should’ve known you were an alien.” Shiro shakes his head. “It’s the only explanation for why your skin’s not all dry and flaky.”

Shiro is part of the Cold Shower Cult, where they believe cold showers give you better skin, lower your stress, boost your immune system, cure your depression—

The list goes on.

Shiro has tried to show him the science, but the pleasure Keith gets from simmering himself is too great for him to be swayed. It’s the main reason they don’t usually shower together unless they’re feeling frisky.

(The other reason is that the shower in the condo is small and it’s just asking for an elbow to the face. That probably should be the most important reason, but Keith takes his shower temperatures seriously, damn it.)

“How’s your book-organizing?” Keith says.

“It’s getting there,” Shiro says. “I mostly just have textbooks left, which shouldn’t be too hard.” He picks up a dark green book with a frog on the cover. Keith thinks it’s the freshman biology text. “Thank you for teaching me that I was definitely not interested in specializing in biology.”

“You really hated that class, huh,” Keith says as Shiro puts the book into a box on the chair next to him.

“Hate’s a bit of a strong word. I was just really, really not interested. But this class—wow, did I hate this class,” Shiro says with a loving smile as he caresses the cover of _Special Relativity, 95th Edition_. “I mean, I liked the subject matter, and it’s, uh. It’s where I first met Adam. But the professor.” He shudders. “I think there’s just something about quantum physicists.”

Keith lets the comment about Adam slip past. “If you have a problem with all quantum physicists, I don't think it's the quantum physicists that are the problem.”

Shiro sniffs as he places the book on a stack on the ground. “Agree to disagree.”

Keith looks between the chair box and the floor stack. “You're keeping it?”

“It's a good book.”

It's a textbook. About special relativity, which Shiro has lived, in the flesh. He doubts Shiro will ever open it again. But he doesn’t say anything as Shiro picks another book off the ground.

“Oh man, I remember this too.” Shiro smiles as he pats the cover of _Introductory Philosophy, 72nd edition_. “Did you ever end up taking this?”

“Left before I could,” Keith says. “I remember you telling me about it, though. Some of those thought experiments were pretty messed up.”

Shiro's smile dims. “Do you remember the one with the teleporter?”

Ah. “When you step in the teleporter, your body gets destroyed, then gets recreated atom-by-atom in a different place,” Keith says. “The question is, at the end of it, are you still you?”

“Yeah.” Shiro sets the book on the table and stares at the cover. “Of all the hypotheticals that I thought might apply to my life, that definitely wasn't one of them.”

Keith reaches out and takes Shiro’s hand in his own. “You're you, Shiro.”

Shiro curls his fingers around Keith's. “Sure doesn't feel like it sometimes.” Then he releases his grip and sighs. “Sorry, you don't want to hear this.”

Keith grabs his hand back. “I want to hear everything you want to say.”

Shiro’s silent for a moment, his gaze steady on Keith’s. Then he looks down. “It's not just this body,” he says. “The Shiro you met. The one you fell in love with.”

“The Pho King King?”

Shiro laughs softly. “Yeah, him. He was... really something. Inevitability made him invincible. But then when he was faced with the inevitable on Sendak’s ship, he became someone else. He died, Keith.”

_I died, Keith._

A wave rises in Keith, but he quells it in his next exhale.

“Desperation changes a man,” Keith says, quietly, “but it doesn't kill him.”

“I wish I could believe that.” Shiro's grip tightens. “Sometimes I wish I could be him again. He was—kinder. Softer. I feel like I'm unrecognizable now. I'm a murderer—“

“You're a defender,” Keith says. “You fought to save your life, and then you devoted your life to saving millions of others. That—what you went through—it could’ve easily made you a cold-blooded killer, but it didn’t, Shiro, and you’re not. You’re strong, and selfless, and the kindest man I’ve ever known.”

Shiro laughs without humor. “I don’t know about selfless. My whole life I’ve been worried about my legacy. How little time I’d have to leave my mark. And now—there’s all this time I never thought I’d have, and I don’t know how to live up to it.”

“Live up to what?”

“I don’t know.” Shiro looks down at the cover of the philosophy book. “The idea that I’m doing enough with it. That all this borrowed time is serving a purpose.”

“If that’s not selfless,” Keith says, “then I don’t know what is.”

Shiro huffs out a breath, his body slumping further into the chair. His thumb strokes over Keith’s. There’s something sad in the way that Shiro can become so small, and it makes Keith ache to see it.

“Things were a lot simpler back then,” Shiro says.

“They can be simple now, too.”

Shiro looks out the window, and Keith follows his gaze. The sky is painted purple and gold with the sunset. The air is dusty with desert sand and memories of a time long past.

Shiro’s hand tightens around his, almost a twitch. When he speaks, his voice is quiet. “I wish I could believe that.”

 

 

**(III)**

_If you just stow these things away in a drawer or cardboard box, before you realize it, your past will become a weight that holds you back and keeps you from living in the here and now. To put your things in order means to put your past in order, too._

 

It’s long past bedtime when Keith returns from his trip to New Altea, but Shiro’s there anyways, waiting in the hangar as Keith parks. He climbs out of the cockpit, tosses his bag on the ground, and drops straight into Shiro’s arms.

Shiro’s ready this time. They barely even sway as Keith collides against him, and his grip on Keith’s back and bottom are solid and sure as he kisses him.

“God, I missed you,” Keith breathes when they break apart.

“I’m guessing third-wheeling Lance and Allura isn’t your idea of a good time,” Shiro says. His voice is low and light with laughter, and the most beautiful thing Keith’s ever heard. He burrows himself down against Shiro’s neck to get closer to it.

“They’re the worst,” he says.

Shiro hums, and his throat vibrates pleasantly by Keith’s face. “I’m sure that’s what they think about us too. You ready to get home?”

“Mmhm.”

“You gonna get off?”

“Mm. No.”

Shiro laughs. “Let go with your legs,” he says, and when Keith does, he adjusts his hold so that he has Keith in a bridal carry instead. In a show of dexterity, he reaches out with a foot and kicks Keith’s bag up for him to catch before he starts walking out of the hangar. “We’ll never hear the end of it if Iverson sees us like this.”

“Ugh. Don’t even talk about that.” Keith doesn’t want one of his first thoughts after getting back to Earth to be about Iverson. The first twenty-four hours after returning home are devoted to Shiro only.

Thankfully, they don’t run into anyone on their way out. Shiro brought the car, not a hoverbike, so Keith rests as Shiro drives them back to their condo.

“Are you hungry?” Shiro says once they’re inside. “I made your favorite red bean soup.”

Keith pauses in the middle of the hall to the bedroom, hand hovering over the zipper of his flight suit. “You made red bean soup?”

“Colleen supervised,” Shiro says. “Heavily.”

“Now I have to try this.”

Shiro beams and sets himself to heating up a bowl as Keith changes out of the flight suit and into pajamas. The feel of loose cotton against his skin is a relief after being constricted for so long. When he comes out, Shiro’s still bent over the stove. Keith starts walking toward him, but he’s distracted by the box on the coffee table.

It’s the box from the hall closet.

The box is Keith's, technically, but everything in it belongs to Shiro.

The afternoon the news about Kerberos was announced, Keith was approached by a Garrison lawyer bearing the box and paperwork. Without family, and without Adam, Shiro left everything—his life insurance policy, and all of his worldly possessions—to Keith.

Keith took it all with him out into the desert when he left the Garrison, and when they moved into this condo he brought it all back for Shiro.

He wasn’t sure Shiro would ever touch it, honestly.

After he finished cleaning out his book collection, Shiro dove into the paperwork, and Keith helped out. Despite most things being done digitally, Earth still believed in hard copies, so they had a fair amount laying around. A lot of it was from raising Shiro from the legally dead. But they’ve always been meticulous about keeping their papers in order, so it didn’t take long to sort through it all.

The _komono_ —or miscellaneous items—took longer, and Keith suspected that it was in large part because of the mementos that would come next. He wouldn’t accuse Shiro of stalling outright, but after a few months he was sure Shiro wouldn’t go anywhere near the box when the time came—that he would claim it’s Keith’s, or pretend to forget about it, or just light it on fire to avoid dealing with what’s inside.

But it’s here now, sitting on the table, lid ajar, and Keith can’t stop staring.

“You want to sit on the floor today?” Shiro says.

Keith jolts. “Uh, sure.” He pulls out the floor cushions from underneath the coffee table and sits on the side away from the box as Shiro brings over the bowl. The warmth of the soup goes straight to his soul, filling him with Shiro’s affection. It’s just what he needs after another week of dehydrated beef stew. He gives Shiro a sweet kiss as he sits down next to him. “It’s delicious.”

“I’m glad. I worked hard on it.”

“Boiling water is so hard, isn’t it?”

“Hey, I mashed these myself,” Shiro says, poking at the beans with his bare finger. Keith’s nose wrinkles and he swats Shiro’s hand away. “You’re eating a labor of love here.”

“I can taste it.”

“The labor?”

Keith rolls his eyes. “The love,” he says, and kisses him again before turning back to the bowl.

They fall into comfortable silence for a moment, Shiro watching as Keith unattractively slurps down soup, until Keith decides to address the elephant on the table.

He nods towards the box. “You opened it.”

“Ah. Yeah.” Shiro looks at it. “I took it out last week. Then I lifted the lid yesterday and looked inside for maybe ten seconds. That’s about as far as I’ve gotten.”

“You don’t have to rush it.”

“I either deal with it now or deal with it when I die,” Shiro says. He smiles wryly. “Or, at least, that’s what Marie Kondo tells me.”

“She has a point,” Keith says. “But there’s a long time to go before you die.”

Shiro’s silent for a moment. Then, slowly, he lifts the lid and pulls something out of the box. It’s small and circular, shiny and metal. Shiro holds it like he’s both afraid of it and in awe of it. Keith leans closer and recognizes, vaguely, the shape of it.

It’s Shiro’s medical bracelet.

Shiro holds it in his hand like he’s testing the weight of it. “I saw it yesterday and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. As messed up as it was, if all of this hadn’t happened… I wouldn’t be here right now.” His hand closes over the bracelet. “It’s funny. Sometimes I’m not sure I like the person I’ve become. But if I didn’t become him, I’d be dead. Would that have been better, maybe?”

“It wouldn’t,” Keith says, maybe too sharply, but this is a train of thought that he’s not going to entertain.

Shiro startles. “Oh.”

“Shiro, none of us would be here if it weren’t for you. Least of all me.” His voice cracks traitorously, and he hates it. This is about Shiro.

“Shit, Keith, I didn’t mean it like that.” Shiro drops the bracelet and pulls Keith in. “I’m so sorry. I know I’ve left you so many times and—“

“Don’t,” Keith says, grabbing the back of his shirt. “Don’t apologize. Never apologize for that. Just—a world without you in it—I’ve lived it already, and I don’t want to do it again. It’s not better. Trust me on that.”

“I know.” Shiro squeezes him tighter. “I know.”

Keith is—he’s not crying, but his breathing has an alarming hitch to it. He closes his eyes and buries his face against Shiro’s chest as he wills it to even out. “Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t—I’m not trying to make this about me.”

Shiro runs a soothing hand across his back. “If it’s about me, then it’s about you, too. We’re in this together, okay? Don’t say sorry.”

Keith nods.

“Hey,” Shiro says, pulling back a little. “Want to see something else?”

Keith nods again, and Shiro reaches back into the box and comes out with a set of photographs. On top is a small print of his official officer’s headshot. There are googly eyes stuck to his face.

It draws a quiet laugh from Keith. “I remember you thought it made you look too serious,” he says. In Shiro’s new official picture, his eyes are soft and there’s a hint of a smile curling at his lips. Keith had (not entirely legally, perhaps) been the one behind the camera.

Shiro glances sideways at Keith, then back. “I was so young then.”

“You’re not exactly a grandpa now,” Keith says.

Shiro doesn’t say anything, just shuffles the picture to the bottom of the stack. He laughs at the one that’s now on top. “It’s us.”

It’s a picture from the winter ball his first year at the Garrison. He’d never been to any kind of formal function, and Shiro and Adam had conspired to put him in a suit and drag him along. They’re posing in front of a CG winter wonderland background, Keith looking uncertain in the middle with Shiro and Adam standing behind him, smiling with their hands on his shoulders like proud parents.

“I still can’t believe Adam’s suit fit me,” he says.

“I didn’t know him before I graduated,” Shiro says, “but apparently he had a heck of a growth spurt. You, too.” He pokes at Keith in the picture. “I forgot how tiny you were.”

“Thank Galra genes for late puberty,” Keith says.

Shiro flips to the next picture slowly, like he knows what’s coming. It’s him and Adam, from that same night, smiling in each other’s arms as they kiss for the camera. Keith stays quiet as Shiro studies it.

Shiro’s finger traces over the curves of his and Adam’s faces, a decade younger and happier. “We had our differences at the end, but… I really loved him.”

Keith squeezes him. “I know.”

Shiro sighs. “I always knew this was going to be hardest part. Any chance you’ll let me just stuff it back in the closet and pretend this never happened?”

“Keep it or don’t,” Keith says, taking care to keep his voice gentle, “but you’re not doing him any favors hiding these away.”

“I know.” Shiro’s fingers tighten on the photographs and they crease a little. Keith puts his hand on Shiro’s to relax him. “I don’t—I probably won’t ever look at these again. But at the same time I don’t think I can just. Throw them out.”

Keith leans against him. “It’s not our memories but the person we’ve become because of our past experiences that we should treasure,” he quotes. “The space in which we live should be for the person we’re becoming now, not for the person we were in the past.”

Shiro stares at him, then a slow, small smile warms his face. “You’ve read it.”

“Yeah. The book you found,” Keith says. “It’s mine.”

“Oh.” Shiro blinks and puts the pictures down. “Wow. I didn’t—I didn’t even think to ask you.”

“Yeah, well.” Keith shrugs. “I don’t blame you. _The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up_ really doesn’t sound like my kind of thing.”

“Why do you have it?”

“One of the families I stayed with got really into it and gave me a copy.” Keith picks at the fabric of Shiro’s pants. “I hated it. I barely had anything of my own, and here they were, throwing it all away. But I understood after I read it. It made me feel better, actually. Like it was okay that I didn’t have a lot, as long as I was always grateful for what I did have.”

“I noticed while I was doing this,” Shiro says. “You still don’t have very much.”

“Maybe not.” Keith cups Shiro’s face with a hand. “But I have everything I need.”

Shiro leans their foreheads together. His smile is still small, still a little weak, but it’s there. “Do I spark joy?” he asks into the space between them.

Keith links their fingers together. “The deepest joy,” he says, and he means every word.

 

 

**(IV)**

_The thought of disposing of them sparks the fear that we’ll lose those precious memories along with them. But you don’t need to worry. Truly precious memories will never vanish even if you discard the objects associated with them._

 

Keith’s never been to Kerberos before. He’s never had reason to be.

It’s strange to see it now, and a bit eerie. A bit painful.

The Persephone is still on the surface, iced over but solid, and Garrison-issued drill equipment is scattered across the ground. The marks of humankind’s first encounter with the unknown.

They’re not here on any official business. Keith had resigned himself to another lonely journey to New Daibazaal when Shiro decided to join him, with the request that they come by Kerberos on the way.

It’s incredible to think about—getting this far out into the universe was just a few years ago considered a crowning achievement of humankind, and now Keith’s treating it like an unwanted stop to a sketchy gas station on the way to his actual destination.

It doesn’t take Shiro long to get the door open, even including the time he took to scrape the ice off. The Persephone was his responsibility, once upon a time, and he knows it inside and out.

“You don’t have to come in,” Shiro says. “It’ll take just a minute.”

The Persephone is a Pandora’s box of emotion that Keith doesn’t want to open. He waits outside.

After a few moments, Shiro returns with a small piece of paper in his hand that looks about the size and shape of a photograph.

Keith laughs despite himself as he helps Shiro step back down to the surface. “Didn’t you just finish getting rid of a bunch of those?”

Shiro smiles. “It’s not for me.”

Keith raises his eyebrows.

“I haven’t touched it in years, but if I close my eyes, I can see it, clear as day.” Shiro’s voice is quiet and soothing, like he’s telling a bedtime story. “When I was on Sendak’s ship, it was the first thing I saw when I woke up, and the last thing I saw before I went to sleep. It made me sad as much as it made me happy, but I wouldn’t give it up for the world. I wouldn’t give you up.”

Keith’s heart stops in his chest.

Shiro hands him the photo. It’s them, pressed together and beaming in the dying light of the evening sun. Behind them is the Persephone; once grandiose, it looms over their figures ominously.

“You were an important part of my past,” Shiro says, his voice wavering with emotion. “And you’re an important part of my future, too. I love you, Keith.”

“Shiro.” Keith’s voice cracks. There’s too much he wants to say, and he’s overwhelmed with the thought of trying to get any of it to come out in the way that he wants. He throws himself against Shiro instead, as if the force of his hug could convey everything he’s ever felt.

They stand there, holding each other at the place where it all ended, and the place where it all began.

After a moment, Shiro draws back and looks out, not back in the direction of Earth, but to the galaxies beyond.

He exhales quietly, the cosmos reflecting in his eyes. “I forgot how much I missed the stars.”

Keith’s chest is tight and his eyes are watery and there’s no place else he’d rather be. He links their hands together and smiles. “They’ve been waiting for you.”

Around them, the universe is endless.

 

_Even if you throw it away or burn it,_  
_it will only leave behind the energy of wanting to be of service._  
_Freed from its physical form, it will move about your world as energy,_  
_letting other things know that_  
_you are a special person_  
_and come back to you as the thing that will be of most use_  
_to who you are now,_  
_the thing that will bring you_  
_the most happiness._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who encouraged me and helped me edit: [allie](https://twitter.com/qorktree), [faia](https://twitter.com/FaiaSakura), [spooky](https://twitter.com/spooky_foot), [audrey](https://twitter.com/sheithinlove).
> 
> And thank you all so much for reading! Happy valentine's day! ♥
> 
> .
> 
>  
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/ailurea)


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